A person who racially abused Brentford striker Ivan Toney on social media has been banned from each football stadium in Britain for 3 years in what police described Tuesday as a “landmark ruling.”
Antonio Neill despatched a racist message to Toney on his Instagram account after the striker scored two objectives in opposition to Brighton in a Premier League fit on Oct. 14.
Police began an investigation after Toney shared an image of the abuse and the message used to be traced to the 24-year-old Neill, who lives in Blyth, a the town in northern England.
Neill seemed in a magistrates’ court docket in Newcastle on Jan. 25 and pleaded accountable to sending an offensive message.
On Monday, he used to be passed a four-month sentence suspended for two years in addition to a three-year football banning order, the primary to be issued beneath a central authority act which turned into legislation in 2022. That widened the scope for banning orders to be issued for on-line hate crimes on the subject of an individual with a connection to a football group.
“If you are going to choose to be vile and abusive to others, doing it from behind a computer screen or on your phone doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it. Far from it,” Northumbria police and crime commissioner Kim McGuinness stated in a observation launched Tuesday.
The order forbids Neill from attending any regulated football fit in Britain and in addition prevents him from touring in another country to look at world friendlies, qualification suits and tournaments.
Brentford stated the membership hopes sentences for on-line abuse build up and known as on social media corporations to take away all hateful content material to make their platforms secure for everybody.